The following background information may present examples of specific aspects of the prior art (e.g., without limitation, approaches, facts, or common wisdom) that, while expected to be helpful to further educate the reader as to additional aspects of the prior art, is not to be construed as limiting the present invention, or any embodiments thereof, to anything stated or implied therein or inferred thereupon.
Typically, hearing aid devices can be used to help people improve their hearing despite natural losses in high-frequency discrimination. Hearing aid devices typically amplify sounds from all directions and equalize the frequency response to correspond with the user's specific hearing loss, so that the user can hear the sounds more easily. Unfortunately, many conventional hearing aid devices amplify all sounds, including ambient noise, making it difficult to distinguish an intended source (e.g., a person's voice) from the rest of the ambient noise. Alternatively, generic hearing amplifier devices are available. But these aids make all sounds equally louder.
It is also known that, while hearing aids compensate for specific frequency deficiencies in the human hearing, they have the tendency to cause the spatial cues to be lost. Without spatial cues, the human brain cannot calculate the direction of the sound. This is what makes understanding a conversation in a crowded restaurant possible for many people without hearing degradation. The brain can actively focus on the conversation, and ignore or depress the other restaurant noises.
In many instances, a solution involves in-ear digital hearing aids. Such hearing aids include multiple microphones that provide tunable directionality so that a hearing aid has a preferred direction of sensitivity, usually tuned to be forward facing. In this way, the hearing aid increases the sound from the conversation ahead of the user, without increasing all of the background noise.
Often, a microphone array and a microphone noise-cancelling array work together to replicate this phenomenon. The microphone array has an array of a plurality of omnidirectional microphones and equivalently define a directivity by emphasizing a target sound and suppressing noise. Further, the microphone array apparatus is capable of detecting the position of a sound source on the basis of a relationship among the phases of output signals of the microphones.
Other proposals have involved directional hearing earpieces and methods of use. The problem with these earpieces is that they do not enable selective listening to the audio signal and directional noise cancelling. Also, they do not simultaneously capture an image of the sound source that is being listened to by the user. Even though the above cited directional hearing earpieces meet some of the needs of the market, a directional noise-cancelling and sound detection system and method for sound targeted hearing and imaging that provides a microphone array that selectively focuses on audio signals from at least one sound source to enable selective listening to the audio signal and directional noise cancelling, including actively reducing background sounds; and an image capturing device that works in tandem with the microphone array to generate images of, and enable viewing of, the sound source from a 360° range relative to the earpiece, is still desired.